


first aid's lost on you, dear (but we'll give it one more go)

by ymirjotunn



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen, major character death offscreen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymirjotunn/pseuds/ymirjotunn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael didn't want the pity kill just yet, so the rest of them get to watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	first aid's lost on you, dear (but we'll give it one more go)

**Author's Note:**

> For RT Secret Santa 2013 (on thegrinningcrow's wishlist); prompt was "I can feel myself rotting from the inside."
> 
> This is probably a little sad.

At first, they yelled at Michael for being the big man.

Up in the little fortified attic, they'd been relatively safe. Zeds (Gavin had called them that for months and it had just started rubbing off) couldn't climb too well - hell, the humans could barely climb all that well - and raids were usually pretty safe. Hop in the car, drive through hordes, use those Grand Theft Auto skills until they hit a house they hadn't been to yet; shoot the lock, shoot the zeds, shoot everything but the supplies and get back home. It'd been a routine, a routine solidified by years of Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil and indie games out the asshole, and it'd been - as things went in literal fucking apocalypses - relatively safe.

And then Geoff had gotten pinned by some tank-looking thing, a hulk of a zed with muscles and greying skin, and Gavin had stayed in the car, shrieking from the window, and Michael had tumbled out to punch the fuck off of his boss - his _friend_ \- and that, that had been the bad idea of the day. The year, maybe.

By the time Geoff had grabbed his gun and glacked the shit out of the zed Michael was lying there with his arms limp and his neck bloodied, and Gavin had made a noise that could break windows and stumbled out of the car with his hands outstretched. Geoff remembered wishing they'd brought more than the three of them on this mission; Gavin remembered cradling Michael's tiny little-boy head in his hands as they drove home in strained silence. Michael didn't remember anything more than blurry shapes and background noise.

Jack and Ryan were at the base with a stretcher, had helped them carry Michael onto it and then up their temporary stairs, made from cardboard boxes reinforced with wooden plants. They crunched with the effort, but held. They'd always held, and they'd hold until they didn't anymore. Just like everything else on this godforsaken earth.

"Michael, Michael, Michael," Gavin had said, and he'd curled up next to his little boy with their hands twined together. "Someone get him something, bloody _hell_ \--"

"Vav," Ray said, touching him with the tip of his toe. "Scoot out."

Most of that was a blur to Michael. Rinsing off his neck had hurt, especially the soapy bit, but the cleaning itself, with a damp washcloth, that had hurt so bad he could remember arching and screaming and nothing else.

The first bit he remembered was waking up to Ray on one side of him, dead silent, and Gavin on the other, talking quietly to Geoff.

He croaked out, "You better not shoot me, you fucks," and Gavin squeaked.

"Michael!" He hugged him tightly, and Michael flinched.

"Hey, body's not exactly spic and span, Gav," he pointed out, voice taut. "Lemme breathe?"

Gavin retreated a little bit. "I wouldn't shoot you, little boy. Never ever."

"I know you wouldn't. I was talking to Geoff. Geoff," he said, trying and mostly failing to raise his voice. His neck stung, like all his muscles were pulled in it. "Don't you dare fucking shoot me."

"It's a pity kill, Michael, not a death sentence." Geoff sat down at his feet, staring at him flat-faced. "Just so you don't have to deal with this."

"Okay, I'm gonna stop you there. Do I seem like the kind of guy that would _appreciate_ a fucking _pity kill_?"

Geoff laughed. "No, no you don't."

"So fuck off!"

Ray got up, still eerily quiet for him, and left, probably to wake up Jack and Ryan. They'd want to know, Michael thought dimly. "I'm...just let me see. Maybe I'm not infected. Maybe it's just a flesh wound."

Gavin laughed at that one, but Geoff didn't pull a smile, and Michael sighed. "What."

"You don't get bitten and not infected."

Michael remembered images of Griffon, of warped half-rotted tattoos and hair fallen out, of the way her body had looked after Geoff had pulled his gun, of Geoff's face afterwards when they were driving out of Austin. "You've only known one person bitten."

"I can't," Geoff said, and this time he was addressing Gavin. "Can you just..." He handed him the gun, and left, just as Ray returned with two shadows behind him.

"You're not fucking killing me until I say you can," Michael said, struggling up into a sitting position. "Do I look dead? Do I look bloodthirsty? If I'm not trying to suck out your eyeballs, don't goddamn shoot me."

"Geoff's right," Ryan said, still standing. Michael learned to hate that pretty damn fast, how Jack and Ryan would always stand while Michael was lying on the ground, like it was some sort of intimidation. "It is a pity kill. Turning is agonizing, and we'll end up having to kill you anyway."

"I don't care!" Michael glared. "I don't care. I need to see how this turns out. You aren't killing me until you absolutely have to."

"You just don't like the pity part of the pity kill," Ray said, in a voice as light as ever, and if Michael didn't know him so well, he would've missed the shake in it.

"No shit I don't," he growled. No pity for him, no pity for anyone, not even if their voice shook when it normally rang out like Ray's.

"I won't let them kill you," Gavin said, hands brushing over his chest. "Not if you don't want them to."

Michael closed his eyes. "You're my boy, Gavin." It didn't have the same kind of cheerful conviction he was used to, but then, it hadn't for months, had it.

"You're my little boy," Gavin had breathed, into his ear, and nosed the tip of it. Michael had fallen asleep, afterwards, but Geoff had told him the rest of the conversation, that Ray had gone and read up on the changing process, that he had a week, tops, if he was infected, and he probably was. The few stories of those who'd escaped infection from a bite were more like legends than anything.

Michael had listened, and nodded, and afterwards Geoff had asked him again and Michael had refused. They'd shouted. Geoff had told him about the hell that Griffon had gone through, about the hell he was going to go through, about the hell he'd put everyone else through, and Michael had just shook his head and repeated. No pity. No pity for anyone.

There was no pity in this world anymore, as far as he was concerned. In video games, it had always been...laughing, waiting for respawn, for a "bog", for the next round, but this was not a multiplayer event. This was real life. There was no respawn. He was dead, he knew he was dead, but he wasn't dead _yet_. He needed to make sure he hadn't gotten himself all fucked up for nothing.

He repeated this to Geoff, got this disgusted glare, was left alone in the little room and fell asleep.

A few hours later he was awake again, had sat up and checked his neck in the reflection of his broken phone, and sighed. It was purple and bloodied and grey in some places. Pretty clear what was going to happen.

Someone retched, and Michael twisted too fast, and retched back.

"Oh God," he said finally, gasping, choking. "Jesus. That _hurt_."

"Sorry, little boy," Gavin said, sitting down on the clean side and wrapping a hand around him. "Oh, bollocks, you're frozen. I didn't think about bringing you a blanket."

"It's fine." Michael leaned up against the wall, utterly miserable. Geoff had been right about that. "I feel way too hot, anyway. It's an infection thing, I guess."

"That's a sure thing, then." Gavin sounded like he was almost pouting.

"You saw it." Michael tugged on his bandage, almost self-conscious. "I look like shit, don't I?"

"You've got..." Gavin trailed off. "The circles. Underneath your eyes." He traced them.

Michael was silent. "Doesn't hurt much."

"No?"

"No," Michael said, a lie. But it was a lie for Gavin's own good, and he'd rather Gavin have this relieved look on his face than that shattered one he'd had when Michael had first gotten back to their safe house. "Can you get Geoff?"

"He's out. Trying to find you painkillers." Gavin's voice was subdued, so much so that Michael was fairly sure he wasn't quite looking for painkillers. "I can get Ray, but Jack and Ryan are out."

"Okay. Ray?"

"You don't want me?"

"Don't want you to have to check on my neck," Michael said, shaking his head. Wincing, when he realized that was a shit idea. "You think I want to put my boy through that?"

Gavin smiled at him, left.

"Feels like," Michael said, when Ray started to unwrap his bandage, "feels like I'm rotting from the inside out." He groaned, a half-smile on his face, tipping his head back. "Kinda hate myself."

"You should've let them shoot you," Ray said, undoing it and swiping cold gel across his neck. Michael flinched.

"Told you. Not until I need to."

"You're stubborn as fuck."

"As dicks," Michael corrected, and Ray at least laughed.

"Nah. You're more stubborn than dicks. You don't give up when someone mouths your balls, do you?"

Michael snorted. "Depends on how talented their tongue is."

"Oh, yeah? I'll have to ask Gavin what he thinks of himself. Scale of one to ten style."

Michael hit him, but he was smiling. Ray was wiping away crusted-over blood on his neck, laying a towel down over the place he'd gotten sick, giving him Geoff's precious vodka to rinse out his mouth so he didn't taste quite so much like death, and despite all of that they still had this same...rapport. Same reason he'd come to Austin in the first place.

It hit him that if he hadn't met Ray, he wouldn't have been in this position. Wouldn't have had to watch Lindsay die. Wouldn't have had to see Geoff's face crumble when he'd had to use that gun the first time. Wouldn't have had to let this happen. But at the same time he wouldn't have done something he loved for so many years, wouldn't have met the people he loved this much, and maybe he would've been worse off if he were still in Jersey. It was impossible to tell.

Either way, he was going to die. Like this, at least, he'd die surrounded by people who made him fucking happy to die for them.

* * *

On the third day he passed out for good. He heard little snippets sometimes, but never really remembered them, or understood what they meant. Everything hurt. Everything.

On the fourth day he woke up hungry and tried to say so, tried to tell them what to do, but all they did was crouch and say things in a language he no longer understood, and he could feel himself tipping forward, closer to flesh, the flesh of someone he didn't remember the name of, and then

and then

and then there was a gunshot

and then darkness.

* * *

He hadn't saved their lives, had known that from the start. But he'd bought them time.

For now, time was the best he could do, and so it was good enough.


End file.
